Former Presidents Bush And Clinton Take The Stage, Throw Shade In Trump's Direction

By: Christopher Feery | July 17, 2017

Believe it or not, political rivals can actually get along. Of course, that sometimes requires a healthy dose of perspective, as well as some distance from the day-to-day grind of political infighting. Two former presidents from opposite sides of the aisle provide a perfect example of that, as they have gone on to develop a mutual respect and admiration now that they’re both on the sidelines. In fact, former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton have actually been able to forge a friendship.

As the Daily Mail shares, the pair brought their bromance out of the shadows for all to see at a graduation ceremony for the Presidential Leadership Scholars program at the George W Bush Presidential Center in Dallas. The pair participated in a moderated conversation in front of the graduation class, and the roughly 300 people in attendance were treated to a civil discussion between two former leaders.

The topic of how the pair grew to be friends came up, and both Bush and Clinton offered up some fascinating insight.

“[It] starts with [him] being a person refusing to lord his victory over dad," Bush noted. “Dad was willing to rise above the political contest. Both men displayed strong character. Why do I have a friendship with him? Well, he's called a brother with a different mother.”

“If you want to be president, realize it's about the people, not about you,” Clinton added. “You want to be able to say, 'things were better off when I quit, kids had a better future, things were coming together'. You don’t want to say, 'God, look at all the people I beat'.”

While the topic of President Donald Trump didn’t come up directly, it’s not too hard to read between the lines to pick up what they were laying down in some of their comments.

'I think it's really important to know what you don't know and listen to people who do know what you don't know,” Bush said at one point.

“If you don’t deal with the incoming fire, it will undermine your ability to do anything else. If all you deal with is incoming fire, you can't keep the promises you made when you were running,” Clinton remarked.

“The best thing that can happen to you when you are in politics is to be consistently underestimated,” he added.

There’s some powerful lessons in there for the current commander-in-chief, and it’ll be interesting to see how he adapts to the demands of the office of the presidency. To date, Trump has shown that he marches to his own drummer. That served him well in the private sector, but politics is a whole different kettle of fish.

All in all, it was a fascinating chat that politicians from both sides would do well to learn from. In a perfect world, we would see the current heavyweights take some steps to come together and stop treating every issue as the end of the world as we know it.